by Daniel Hathaway
Cleveland, March 5, 2015 — The Cleveland International Piano Competition has released the names of twenty-nine pianists, ages 12-18, who will receive invitations to journey to Cleveland in May, 2015 to participate in the CIPC Young Artists Competition and Institute.
Launched in 2003 as a one-day competition for Ohio piano students, the Young Artists Competition has been reorganized this year to follow the multi-round format of its parent competition, which will be held next in the summer of 2016.
The ten-day Young Artists event will run from May 12-21. Opening rounds will be held in Gamble Auditorium at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music in Berea. The final round with the Canton Symphony Orchestra, Gerhardt Zimmermann, conducting, will take place in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on May 21. [Read more…]
As much fun as it is to listen to the parade of pianists who show off their prowess during the grueling rounds of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, what’s truly rewarding is to hear performances by former laureates who have followed up on their early promise by building impressive international careers. Angela Hewitt, who took third place in the 1979 contest (then the Casadesus Competition) returned to Cleveland on Saturday evening to play on CIPC’s excellent concert series in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. 
British/Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt is no stranger to Cleveland, having won third prize in the 1979 Casadesus Competition, now the Cleveland International Piano Competition. “I was just a kid,” she said with a laugh during a recent telephone conversation. “But I remember it very well. I remember some of the repertoire I played. I remember many of the competitors. And I remember that we all stayed in the Wade Park Manor — see, I even remember the name!”
The laureates of most international piano competitions vanish into the ether once the medals are bestowed and prizes awarded. Not so with the Cleveland International Piano Competition, whose leadership has sought new ways to keep its prizewinners in the local public eye and ear.
It’s one thing to win a major international piano competition by a pleasing a panel of jurors, and quite another to go on to make a successful career by enthralling audiences with your playing. Stanislav Khristenko, who took first place in the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2013, left no doubt in his Carnegie Hall preview recital on Sunday evening, May 11 in CIM’s Kulas Hall that he has all the right stuff to thrive on the international concert circuit.
Has winning the 2013 Cleveland International Piano Competition changed Stanislav Khristenko’s life? “It definitely has,” the 29-year-old Khristenko said en-thusiastically during a recent telephone conversation. “At this point I feel very happy that I am able to do what I always wanted to do — and that is to play concerts.”
